Noticed some new event signs on our road yesterday and popped along to the local equestrian centre of all places to find a number of helicopters! It seems our neighbour and local business boss (Andrew Whitehouse) owns/runs Historic Helicopters in his spare time from the same site. They were flying one of their two Wessex aircraft for the first time having recently managed to get an air worthiness certificate again after a considerable layoff and refurb. He's also got the only flying Whirlwind; and two (non flying) Sea Kings. We often see him in his white Bell JetRanger 3, and white Hughes 300 overhead and the JetRanger was there too. As was a Gazelle, but I don't think that was one of his. Anyway..the Wessex was quite a beast and good to see up close.

On the electric theme, we bought a BMW i3 for Fran last summer and have had great fun with it. She loves driving it. It does 100 to 120miles on a charge (160 for the new one just introduced) which is further than we want to go in it and if its of any sort of factor for you "fuel" costs are (literally) about a tenth of what they are in my Rangie! Like all electrics its very nippy, comfy enough, a few toys....worth a look? (No memory seats tho...)

Was surprised to find the 5 litre supercharged Full Fat Range Rover with over 500bhp is exempt from the charge but the M100 and Turbo Esprit are not. Seems unlikely that they chuck more sh1t in the air than the FFRR but since I never drive the Lotus up there, but sometimes do go in the Rangie that suits me just fine...

My first time at Race Retro today. Hall 4 (mainly auto jumble) was a bit reminiscent of the old Lotus Parts fairs held there about 20 or so years ago. I even saw some M100 rear lights! The rest was in more modern buildings with what seemed to me an odd eclectic mix of racing stuff and "lifestyle" stands. Is that essential learning from Goodwood? - (Ladies clothes stands, teak furniture, glasses cleaners....) A few great cars to gawp at but have to say overall I was underwhelmed. Sat for half an hour with a coffee watching Harry Garage on my phone doing the Silverstone Auction highlights as it was another £15 (on top of the £22 entry) to get in their part. 2.5 hour run up there with no issues. 4.5 run home with most of the M5 in car park mode. Good to have experienced what they have to offer...but I wont be going again.

Pete, cant help with this myself, but...
I was down in the SouthWestLotusCentre last week and James and Phil showed me around a lovely dry sump Turbo Esprit that they are recommissioning to "as new" condition. Its stunning and was ready to back out under its own steam for the first time when they found they couldn't get reverse. Further investigation revealed symptoms almost identical to those described above including the snapped/welded lever. The guys were actively making a good lever assembly from two or three others, each of which had some sort of issue. Maybe you could give James (and/or Phil) a call and talk it through with them?

You make a well argued case Andy. As an EV owner I also frequent a forum of theirs. The evangelists there are very evangelical and I've seen many put downs of the Hydrogen power verses battery power. I've no knowledge myself, but have cross posted one of the better argued positions on hydrogen albeit put in a slightly different context in answer to the "why not wait for hydrogen?" reason to not buy electric. Do you find it convincing? I'm intrigued about the argument on how hard it is to get hold of the admittedly abundant hydrogen around the planet - that, if true, sounds like a killer to me.
Why not wait for hydrogen?
You'll probably have heard that hydrogen is "less efficient", but let's put that in real terms. Clean hydrogen is made with electricity (again you may have heard "hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe!" - but it's always attached to something and requires energy to separate). Because it's so inefficient, you need three times as much electricity to drive a mile in a hydrogen fuel cell vehicle than an electric vehicle. This means that on most electricity mixes, an HFCV produces more CO2 than a combustion-engined vehicle. You can produce it from renewables, sure, but you'd get three times as many miles from putting that electricity into a battery instead.
But most hydrogen isn't produced cleanly, and is made by steam reformation of natural gas. Being a fossil fuel, this means CO2 is produced as a byproduct. This is why hydrogen tends to be eulogised by petrochemical companies and countries with lots of natural gas deposits, because they stand to make a lot of money by exporting gas if it becomes the oil of the future.
There are also cost issues - the main reason we haven't seen hydrogen take off, despite some reasonable cars being on the market, is that filling stations are exorbitantly expensive. It would take £20bn just to make enough electrolysers to fuel all the country's car miles, before accounting for all the electricity generation required, storage and kiosk facilities, maintenance etc. So if it happens, which wouldn't make much sense for the aforementioned reasons, it will be a long, long wait. And the conscience-related reasons for ditching combustion engines, whether geopolitical, health or climate change, all worsen the longer you wait.

Ignoring the high end stuff....most serious racers have vans like the Transit or Vito to carry the "workshop" and the car on a trailer or in a shuttle. Other than that, Europe has gone mad for SUVs (old school 4x4s in the UK) though most of the new ones are often only 2WD with all the towing power of a hairdryer. Towing weights are therefore the spec to check on and the kings of the road here are Land Rover's products (ignoring their questionable reliability). Most often Land Rover Discoverys sometimes Range Rover (either full fat or Sports). All of the big LandRovers have a 3.5 ton towing weight.

Short memory Buddsy - that's exactly what Cameron did after firing the starting gun...
That was the opportunity to put a Brexiteer in the hot seat - but MPs were wise to that and ensured the power stayed with those who have absolutely no confidence or belief in a future for the UK outside the EU. At that point the negotiation was lost. No deal is our only hope now but it is looking very unlikely already and less likely by the day.

Not been bothered by the police at all, but I have had to retain a proper plate to put on the bike for its annual MOT test which I then swap back to the smaller one afterwards. Obviously depends who you get - anyone in that kind of position can be jobsworth one moment and have better things to do the next. None of my plates are even vaguely illegible or have distorted letters or strategically placed coloured screws but they're not all entirely dimensionally correct or with the official font. Was stopped by a bike cop once when I forgot to change the plate on the trailer I was towing to the right car. I actually had the correct plate on the trailer but with another velcro'd on top. As soon as I peeled off the wrong one the chap was happy....but in fact neither plate was regulation perfect if he'd wanted to make a fuss....